


The Third Degree

by Nebulad



Series: Sea of Stars [21]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Shenanigans, post-ME2, pre-ME3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 09:32:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7430177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Faust Shepard turns in the SR-2 to the Alliance and is arrested for her involvement with Cerberus, her crew is questioned about their involvement with the Commander. Those that can be found offer testimony should Faust ever stand trial, with varying degrees of actual truthfulness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Third Degree

They weren’t going to send Talus in.

Garrus had to keep reminding himself of that.

There was protocol that forbade family members from interrogating each other, and even if Bailey waived the rule like he waived a lot of stuff for Shep’s crew, his father wasn’t going to accept the offer. Garrus would be questioned by a turian cop with a member of the embassy present, and with an Alliance official there to collect testimony should Faust ever stand trial.

“Tell me about Commander Shepard,” was the first question. Like Garrus had predicted, Talus was nowhere to be seen— it was possible he was on the other side of the two-way mirror, but Garrus really wasn’t going to fixate on that right then.

 _Tell me about Commander Shepard—_ vague, to test the waters. Try and see how much loyalty she commanded, how biased the opinions were going to be. “She’s worth ten of everyone in this room,” he said, counting himself. He wasn’t going to try and pretend to be detached from the situation— that was for Kasumi and Miranda to handle. They would fake impartiality, they would pretend like Faust wasn’t constantly coming through for them. They were the ones whose testimony would be used.

Garrus was just here to make sure that when he was disowned, he gave Talus something to fume about.

“You speak highly of her,” the turian cop that Garrus didn’t recognize said. His tone was ambiguous, with the _considering she’s human_ implied by his sub-vocals.

“She’s a hero,” he responded flatly. Being arounds other species so frequently, he let his own sub-vocals get a little out of control. They weren’t really adept at reading them, so he could always add something to the conversation without making it an issue. Right now, he wasn’t doing much to hide his resentment from the interrogator that could read him clear as water.

“That’s what we’re trying to prove.” If he was trying to reassure Garrus, he could have saved his breath. Garrus had been behind that glass a thousand times, and he knew how this worked— Faust always made him play the good cop, and now he was staring down the _good_ cop and it was no more genuine than when he played it.

Next time he saw her, he was going to suggest changing the game to _bad cop/bad cop._ They’d save a lot of time if they quit trying to pretend like they weren’t willing to shoot out kneecaps.

. . . . .

When the interrogation was over, Miranda would ram her elbow into the throat of the guard to her right. With him incapacitated for a moment, she would feign forward to throw off the aim of the guard to her left, and then take off back through the atrium and escape out a window. There was a car already waiting there for her— and she didn’t trust the driver, but she would take Miranda as far as the outskirts of Vancouver before dropping her off. After that, she was on her own.

For now, though, she was being questioned about Shepard. They’d gotten through the insipid banter about how well Miranda knew her, what Miranda’s role was on the _SR-2,_ how much time she’d spent around Shepard. She was lying through her teeth, frankly, not that any of Alliance were smart enough to pick up on that. _Shepard and I had a strictly professional relationship. There was a mutual mistrust— I didn’t believe she was capable and she was unwilling to cooperate with Cerberus. We spent little recreational time together. I was her XO and not much else._ It was… grating on her, which was surprising. _She_ knew that she was lying, the person she was lying to had no idea— it was an ideal situation, and yet something inside her was uncomfortable.

“No we were not friends by any means.”

 _Unless she asks, then remind her that I_ said _this would happen, I_ told _her to just take the ship and finish the job. I would have gone with her._

“Shepard did her job by the book to the point where The Illusive Man was getting impatient with her. She took too much time to fulfill as many regulations as she could. She was antagonistic, certainly, but loyal to the Alliance.”

 _Unless she asks, then remind her of the time she insisted we have a sleepover in her quarters and she told me about the time she stole the_ SR-1 _out of the Citadel docks and I laughed so hard that EDI asked if I was suffocating. It was the first sleepover I ever had and when she found out she invited Jack, Kasumi,_ and _Tali’Zorah up and we drank vodka and ended up shattering her empty fish tank in a biotic pissing match. We were so drunk that we all cried at the end of_ Fleet and Flotilla. _Did you let her keep the picture of us she put on her desk?_

“I’m surprised you’re cooperating, despite your indifference towards the Commander.” The Alliance woman interrogating her was wearing the casual uniform that Faust had flat out refused, and clearly thought she had Miranda backed into a corner.

“I was curious— Cerberus always told us that the Alliance was completely inept. I wanted to see for myself,” she said, smiling flatly. _You’re all lucky that Faust is still willing to save you, even after this._

_You’re all lucky to have her._

. . . . .

This many people watching her was making Kasumi itch. Granted there were only like, two people in the room but still. She was there for Shepard, anyway, and then after that she’d walk out of here while the Alliance tried to figure out how she’d escaped; it was just a shame that she couldn’t tamper with the video surveillance without invalidating her testimony.

“So how well did you know Commander Shepard during your time on the _SR-2?”_ The man interrogating her was loaded, but trying not to brag about it. His watch, which would leave the station with Kasumi, was platinum even if it was plain. His haircut was expensive. He smelled faintly of cologne that they couldn’t afford to stock in department stores. All in all, someone who sort of resented being designated to interrogation work.

“Not great,” she said, shrugging casually. “She hauled me out every now and then because I’d open doors for her, but other than that there wasn’t a lot of chatting.” That was a lie, and the man seemed to _suspect_ that it was, but what was he going to say? That the thief was lying to protect her contract client?

“So you two didn’t spend a lot of recreational time together?” he asked skeptically. Kasumi thought back and… well, she wasn’t here to tell the truth anyway. Truth was that sometimes Shepard would come to lay down in the port observation deck and just ask questions about old adventures. Or she would invite Kasumi up to her quarters to help build those models she liked so much— _dexterity, Kasumi, I need someone to glue all the little knobs on it before I smash the fucking thing—_ and then they’d end up taking their supper up there. Sometimes they learned valuable lessons together, like how sad you could get while watching _Fleet and Flotilla_ after sharing two bottles of mixed vodka that looked like a nebula.

“Of course not. What would we talk about?” They’d once spent a whole day ducking in and out of cover to avoid bullet fire while discussing the finer points of hacking. Faust was no engineer but she wasn’t a soldier bashing against locked doors, either. It was always refreshing to meet a marine with a head for security.

“I take it you weren’t impressed with her command, then?” Kasumi leaned forward, smiling.

“I never said that. I just said we weren’t really close— she kept the food coming and kept the crew relatively safe, all things considered. She has a great head for improvisation and it kept a lot of us alive.” She would go on for a little while, _really_ talk Shep up. They would leave the room to discuss their findings, and she would slip out.

Maybe she would try to find where they were holding Faust. She’d turned down Kasumi’s offer to help her disappear once, but that was _before_ she’d been arrested. Always best to double check.

. . . . .

Tali’Zorah was already waiting outside when Garrus was finally released with strict orders to either make his way to the embassy or find a ship to haul him back to Palaven. Homeworld was looking… likely. He’d pay his mother the visit he owed her, and check up on Solana.

“How’d it go?” He approached Tali, who didn’t seem surprised to see him there still. She’d no doubt been ordered to return to the Flotilla, and a lot less gently than it was _suggested_ to him that he wasn’t welcome on the Citadel.

“Did you know that humans have these huge _gaps_ in their translators? It was impossible to communicate, every third word wasn’t in their dictionary. I was _trying_ to play it cool but…” She shrugged. “It got out of hand pretty quick— not that they realized, but I didn’t get a lot of testimony in.”

“Me either.” He’d come pretty close to admitting some things about him and Faust that wasn’t C-Sec _or_ the Alliance’s business. Or his dad’s, and he’d _definitely_ been on the other side of the mirror, probably all smug that he’d been right about Garrus all along. Always gunna end up on the other side of the glass. “Are you gunna message your aunt?” he asked.

“Eventually. No one on the Citadel knows how the Flotilla works, so I can hang around for a while. What about you?”

“I’m in for an awkward trip home with my dad bright and early tomorrow morning.” There’d been a perfunctory IM exchanged with time and ticket information, which was all Garrus expected to get anyway. Palaven was really the best place for him, though, no matter how he got there. The turians were going to be ready if Garrus had to bring it right to the damn Primarch.

“So you’re free tonight?” He was. The only one who ever asked him to do stuff was Shepard, and she wasn’t leaving the Vancouver facility. _Spirits_ that sounded final. “Then let’s go get drunk. For Shepard and the Collectors and… everything else,” she said, starting to walk forward without checking to see if he was following. She probably needed several drinks now that she had some time to process what happened with her dad.

Come to think of it, he could use a stiff drink with someone who could match him after the past few months too.

**Author's Note:**

> Before I get into it, [my writing blog is here](http://nebulaad.tumblr.com).
> 
> "But all the women in mass effect pretty well hated each other Tali has a special dialogue where she puts Miranda specifically down" well you know what that's bullshit and I hated it so now instead they had a sick fucking sleepover where they probably did all the lines to the big romance scene in _Fleet and Flotilla_ while sobbing hysterically. Miranda was the one who destroyed the fish tank but Jack tells people it was her so she isn't embarrassed. Tali learned something new about biotics and alcohol. When the Alliance guts the captain's cabin, they'll find a thousand little places where "Kasumi was here" was written on the walls.
> 
> Also Miranda and Kasumi don't go out for drinks at the end because they ollied out. I was gunna give Jack an opportunity to provide testimony before deciding that the Alliance would be more interested in holding her rather than gathering evidence from her. Samara declined the last minute sleepover invitation but is always invited anyway. She provides testimony but not to the Alliance— probably to the Asari embassy which will then forward it to the Alliance, but I can't picture Samara hanging around because I mean her sort of justice doesn't always line up with "things that are legal" so I can imagine the Asari were pretty quick with damage control. EDI's first sleepover ends in them crank calling the Council— everyone else is drunk but EDI's just in it for the shenanigans. Garrus isn't allowed at sleepovers, but Zaeed does briefly show up once and comes out _insisting_ that he isn't _fucking crying_ about a turian and quarian romance. He is.
> 
> Also Tali's translation thing is just a weird nod to the fact that very few of the other companions speak in their own language as frequently as she does? Like the Asari companions I think have a little bit but not like, casually. Garrus gives us no turian words. Mordin never mentions anything in a Salarian language. Maybe Wrex or Eve talk about some old Krogan words. But Tali is constantly like... Quarians just have a higher rate of words not translating I guess she has _bosh'tet_ , _keelah se'lai_ , _vas_ , _nar_ , even _geth_ is technically a word in Khelish. Compared to the other races... I mean clearly the other races Aren't Fond of Quarians, and they lost their homeworld before humans found the beacon on Mars, so I mean. They probably aren't on the up and up with Khelish.


End file.
